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Drip Programs (Lead Nurturing)

Concept

Drip Programs (also known as lead nurturing programs) are also located in the Automation section. Drip Marketing allows correspondence to be sent to the prospects on a specific list at specific intervals based on time or prospect activities. Use drip programs for ongoing marketing campaigns and to nurture leads that may not be sales-ready. Emails sent through drip programs will be recorded in the Prospect Profile as an activity.

Instructions

Choose a Name for your drip program that will only be used internally.

Determine if you would like to enable “Only send emails during business hours (10am-4pm M-F)”

If business hours only is enabled, designate the timezone in which you would like the emails to be sent during business hours.

Note: Optionally choosing to make the drip program only send emails between 10:00 am and 4:00 pm, Monday through Friday when checked, Pardot will pre-load the time zone associated with your organization’s account (though not necessarily your user account). You can change the time zone if desired (for example, you could choose Tokyo local time if you are segmenting a group of Japanese prospects). This option will be pre-checked for all new drips that you create but if you would like to enable it for drips you have already created, you would need to edit them and check the option.

Step 2: Recipients

Select a list that will receive your drip emails.

You can add (or subtract) lists using the + button.

Push Next.

Note: Prospects who are on multiple lists which are part of the same campaign will only receive one copy of the email. If you would like to use a suppression list, check the Use Suppression Lists box and select your suppression lists.

Step 3: Logic

Create the flow of your drip program using the Available Actions icons on the left. Use these actions to specify which email to send, when it should be sent, and what follow up actions should take place. Drag the Action icons into the large Drip Logic box on the right-hand side. Icons can be rearranged by dragging and dropping them in the desired order.

Available Action Icons

Send email

Use this icon to select an email to send. When inserted, you will be asked to select your email template.

Has prospect clicked link? *

Use this icon to check for any link click in an email. Adding this icon will launch two new prospect tracks, a “Yes” click track and a “No” click track. You can then add additional action items on one or both of these tracks to segment your prospects appropriately. If desired, the “Jump to Step” action can be used to jump between tracks. A pause must come before the check for link click action.

Has prospect opened email? *

Use this icon to check for an HTML email open. Adding this icon will launch two new prospect tracks, a “Yes” click track and a “No” click track. You can then add additional action items on one or both of these tracks to segment your prospects appropriately. If desired, the “Jump to Step” action can be used to jump between tracks. A pause must come before the check for email open action.

* Note: You must insert a pause of at least 1 day between sending an email and checking for a click or an open to allow the system to correctly read click and open actions. The system will only check for clicks and opens within the paused amount of days. After the pause, people are placed on the “yes” or “no” track and will continue on the appropriate track until that track ends or the track reaches a “Jump to Step” action. If they click or open at a later time, they will not be transferred to the other track.

Jump to step **

Use this icon to jump to a later step in the drip program. This is useful for re-joining the main progression of a drip program after a prospect has gone down a different track in the drip based on a link click or email open action.

** Note: Jump to step can only be used to jump further down in a drip program. It is not possible to jump to link click or email open actions.

Pause

Use this icon to pause the drip program for a specified number of days before the next action.

Assign to User ***

Use this icon to assign a prospect who takes action to a specific user (typically used after “click” icon). When inserted, you will be asked to select a user.

Assign to Group ***

Use this icon to assign a prospect who takes action to a user group (typically used after “click” icon). When inserted, you will be asked to select a group.

*** Note: Assignment actions will only assign prospects that are not already assigned to a user. It will not reassign prospects who are already assigned.

Notify User

Use this icon to notify a user of a prospect’s action (typically used after “click” icon). When inserted, you will be asked to select a user.

Notify Assigned User

Use this icon to notify the assigned user of a prospect’s action (typically used after “click” icon).

Add to List

Use this icon to add the prospect to a list you select. Can be used to add prospects to another drip program (if that drip is using the same list as its recipient list) or can be used to further segment prospects into different lists.

Remove from List

Use this icon to remove the prospect from a list you select. The list can be the recipient list for the current drip program (essentially removing the prospect from the current drip) or any other list in your account.

Use this icon to assign the prospect to an active salesforce.com assignment rule. This pushes the prospect to salesforce.com to both be created as a Lead and to be assigned by your active salesforce.com assignment rule.For salesforce.com verified connector accounts only

Add to salesforce.com campaign ****

Use this icon to add the prospect to a salesforce.com campaign. You can select which salesforce.com campaign and status to give the prospect.For salesforce.com verified connector accounts only

Create salesforce.com task ****

Use this icon to create and assign salesforce.com tasks. You will be required to enter a task Subject, Assigned to, Priority, and Status. Optionally you can enter when the task is due, set a reminder, and/or add comments.For salesforce.com verified connector accounts only

**** Note: This data will be pushed into salesforce.com during a sync, which typically takes place upon an assignment for net new leads, or on set intervals (roughly every 15 minutes) for records that already exist in salesforce.com. If the prospect only exists in Pardot (no lead or contact record in salesforce.com), the prospect will not be pushed up to the salesforce.com campaign until you assign them to a user, a queue, a group, or active assignment rule. We store the campaign record and status with the prospect and then sync this information over to your CRM once a triggering event occurs (typically an assignment of the prospect).

Once you’ve outlined your drip program using the icons, click Next.

Action icons can be used an unlimited amount of times in a drip program.

To remove an action item from the drip, simply click the red “x”

Step 4: Confirmation

The confirmation page displays a summary of your email details. To make changes to your drip program, use the upper navigation to move backward through the steps at any time.

Your drip program will be saved in “pause” mode, allowing you to complete all the components of your campaign before activating the drip. To activate the drip, locate your new drip in the Drip Programs table and click “Resume.” Drips can be paused and resumed at any time.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I send a series of emails without checking for clicks or performing additional actions? If you want to send a simple series of emails and not check for clicks or take additional action, simply use the “Send Email” and “Pause” icons, disregarding the more advanced options.

What happens if a prospect is removed from a drip and later added back? A “pause” is required between drip emails. If you remove a prospect from a drip and later add them back to the list, they will resume the drip where they left off (instead of starting over again)

How often can prospects be added to a drip? Prospects can be continually added to a drip program, regardless of what step the other prospects have reached. Every time a new prospect is added to the drip program’s recipient list, they will start at the beginning of the drip.

How do I stop a drip campaign? You can pause a drip at any time, just click on the name of the drip and then click “Pause Drip” in the upper navigation. When viewing a saved drip, you will see a hyperlinked number next to each action. Clicking on this number will display a list of all the prospects who have “passed” this stage. Note: If the stage is sending an email, the number will include all prospects who completed the stage, even prospects who are not mailable.

What do I do if I want to add new emails to a drip campaign? You can add new emails to a drip campaign at any time by editing the drip. A prospect will only receive emails that you add after their current drip phase. The system will not retroactively send new emails to prospects who are already farther along in the drip. However, it is very important to note that if you add an email to the very end (including deleting the last email in the drip and inserting a new one), than all prospects will receive this email, including those who have completed all drip phases.

What if I want to switch out a template I’m using in a drip? If you would like to update an existing email in your drip to a new email template, you can simply edit this email template in Step. 3 Logic of the Drip Program Wizard. You can click on the blue, hyperlinked name of the email, which will bring up a drop down box for you to select the desired email. Editing an email (as opposed to adding a new email) that is at the end of your drip program will not send this email to prospects who have already completed this drip phase.

Will a prospect receive the same email template twice? This question depends on when your Pardot account was created. If your account was created before December 5th, 2012 and the prospect has already received the email template from another drip program, autoresponder, or automation rule, they will NOT receive the same email template again. However, if you used that email template in a list email or a one-to-one email to the prospect, then the drip program will send them the email again. If your account was created after December 5th, 2012 and the prospect has already received the email template from another drip program, autoresponder, or automation rule, they WILL receive the same email template again.

Want a prospect to receive the same email template twice across multiple drip programs? A Pardot administrator can enable your account to allow email templates to be sent more than once to the same prospect from multiple drip programs by clicking their email address in the top right of the application > Click “Settings” > “Edit Account” > Check the box for “Drip Programs: Allow email templates to be sent more than once to the same prospect” > Save account settings. Regardless of if the prospect already received the email template from another drip program, autoresponder or automation rule, the prospect will receive the email again. Likewise, this setting can be disabled if you only want an email template to be sent once to the prospect via drip programs, autoresponders or automation rules.

If a drip is set to only send during business hours, how do the pauses work? If you have enabled the option to “Only send emails during business hours (10am-4pm M-F)”, pause periods will still include weekends, but emails will not be sent outside of business hours. For example, if your pause period ends on a Sunday and the next step in the drip is to send an email, that email will not be sent until the following Monday at 10am.

When can I see how many prospects have completed a certain step in a drip? Prospects within each phase of the drip program will only populate once the phase is complete. There is not an option to see prospects “processing” through the phase.

What happens if I edit a bounced email address to the correct email address? If a prospect email has bounced or you are editing their email address within their record and they are on a drip program, re-send the email that bounced to the prospect with their newly updated email address. The drip program will not go back and send the email in the drip once the email address has been updated. To do this, you can click the email address within the prospect record and then select the email template that you would like to re-send to them. Each prospect is associated with a prospect ID so even if their email has been changed in their record, this does not consider them a “new prospect”.

Notes

If using the “check for click” action, you cannot leave a “yes” branch empty. If you want to end the program after a link click, simply insert a one (1) day “pause” action on the yes branch, which will cause your campaign to end in one (1) day while still meeting all system requirements.

When using the ‘jump to step’ action, you cannot jump directly to a step that branches. When we check for a click or for an open, we wouldn’t know which branch to go down.

The ‘jump to step’ action must come at the end of a branch. Otherwise, any actions below it will never be reached.

Note that if another user is editing the same drip program at the same time, you will receive a warning message. If either user saves without incorporating the other’s changes, you may lose your work. In this case, one user should click “cancel” and let the other finish editing.